First, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin asserts that she is a feminist.
And now, television host Glenn Beck, through “divine providence,” is aspiring to “reclaim” the civil-rights movement.
This is Beck earlier this spring: “This is the moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil-rights movement. We are on the right side of history.
We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, damn it, we will reclaim the civil-rights moment. We will take that movement because we are the people that did it in the first place.”
Huh?
The same Beck who uses his television show to promulgate outlandish conspiracy theories and accused President Obama of having a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” now considers himself brethren of the Freedom Riders.
What a strange, strange man. But even more perplexing is the culture and the political movement that Beck and Palin are associated with. Beck and Palin rallied tens of thousands of presumably Tea Party activists, sympathizers, and the like in our nation’s capital. The rally — dubbed “Restoring Honor” — packed the National Mall.
Flocking from all over the country to unpleasant D.C. humidity, people came to hear Beck and Palin call for an America that once was. A more traditional America, an America in touch with its Christian values. Or, a less radical Marxist socialist government rooted in nefarious liberation theology.
There seems to be an element of fear motivating Beck as well — fear of a rapidly changing demography. By the time this freshman class sends its children to college, your typical Tea Party member won’t recognize America.
Standing only a few steps from where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the 47th anniversary of the speech, Beck, Palin, et al., paid an unfitting tribute to the civil-rights icon and rebuke the nation’s first black president. Also ironic: The crowd was overwhelming white and older.
After a summer of protests and town halls, Beck — part rambling philosopher, part showman — and the inchoate Tea Party movement have reached an interesting point.
The rest of the public knows by now that this movement is angry, that the members believe under Obama the size and scope of government has grown exponentially. They get a little crazy some times — well, even racist and bigoted. But, taken seriously and sincerely, Tea Party members have put forth a valid critique.
But do they really want to take us back? And to when exactly?
This type of lamenting is not only dishonest but dangerous as well. To hear a crowd that is overwhelmingly white, older, and politically conservative fawn for what used to be is somewhat offensive. And Beck’s appropriation of the civil-rights legacy is offensive and unusually bizarre.
Even for Glenn Beck.
Imagine, if you will, a split screen. On one side you have Beck and Palin rallying thousands of supporters. There’s a reference to “refudiating” big government. There’s talk of how as a country we are off track because we are not sufficiently faithful to God. All of the typical stuff you hear at Tea Party events.
On the other side of the screen is King in 1963 delivering his most famed speech. This crowd has packed the National Mall as well. But it looks a lot different — young and old, black and white, Protestant and Jewish.
There is no jeremiad to turn the clock back or return to a bygone era. There is, however, hope and excitement about the future.
Those who attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 weren’t simply a slice of the population who were politically disaffected. The march 47 years ago was a microcosm of all of America. The only similarity between the two is that they occurred in the same place. Any and all allusions to the civil-rights movement by Beck should stop there.